House approves plan to cut food stamps

The House narrowly approved a Republican plan Thursday to cut billions from food stamps by tightening eligibility rules and ending state waivers that have allowed able-bodied workers to continue to get help when unemployed for more than three months.

The 217-210 vote represents a victory for Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) who has promoted the bill as a revival of the spirit that led to welfare reform in the 1990’s.

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But the tactics were extraordinary with no committee markup to review the 109-page package, nor amendments permitted on the floor. And by pushing the farm bill debate so far to the right, the majority leader risks making it impossible to reach a larger deal this fall with the Democratic Senate.

Indeed, the House package promises $39 billion in savings over the coming decade—nearly 10 times what the Senate approved in June. The poorest households with children are largely protected, but 3.8 million people could be cut from the rolls in 2014 and hundreds of thousands of households would see their benefits reduced.

“We have never before seen this kind of partisanship injected into a Farm Bill,” she said of the vote. “ Not only does this House bill represent a shameful attempt to kick millions of families in need off of food assistance, it’s also a monumental waste of time. The bill will never pass the Senate, and will never be signed by the President.”

Caught in the middle, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) pleaded for support even as he orchestrated a series of exchanges on the floor to let anxious Republicans vent their concern about the impact on vulnerable populations like veterans.

“My goal is to get a five-year farm bill enacted,” Lucas said. “This is a step toward that goal. Quite simply it shouldn’t be this hard to pass a bill that ensures all of us in the economy have enough to eat. And that’s what a farm bill does.”

“I know you will vote your conscience but let me go to conference with the Senate with the maximum number of options to work through.”

Democrats, whose support will be pivotal to Lucas down the road, were unconvinced. All 195 voted no, and with 15 Republicans also opposing the cuts, the GOP had to pull back loyal moderates like New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen –who had been leaning no—to preserve the narrow win.

Members held up photographs of low income beneficiaries entitled “The Face of Hunger” for C-SPAN cameras. When Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) invoked Genesis —“God created Adam, placed him in the Garden to work it” —Fudge shot back that the Bible also mentioned the “poor and hungry over 200 times.”

“It is terrible policy wrapped in a terrible process…It was just cooked up in the majority leader’s office as some sort of Heritage Foundation fever dream,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). “It is a rotten thing to do.”

“It is just unconscionable that they would think this is the road to prosperity,” said California Rep. George Miller, the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Labor Committee. “That you get to the road to prosperity by attacking the most vulnerable in our society.”